Tag Archives: stress

t minus two

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I’ve been meaning to post about our upcoming move for a while now, but seeing as it’s less “upcoming” and more “two fucking days”, I’ve sort of run out of time. For everything. AHHHHH!

After learning that completion of our new place was going to be delayed by a couple of months, we held off on the original plan of listing Sparta for sale in November. There was slight concern that selling in the new year would be more difficult, but we didn’t really have a choice: the show must go on, and we needed the money from the sale of the condo. Luckily, our realtor MJ is a superstar and with her heavy guidance, we made Sparta look as attractive to outsiders as possible. I had assumed that the giant yeti would make an excellent selling point, but MJ disagreed so the yeti had to go. He’s currently enjoying a life of leisure in Sardis, with Shan’s mom. We visit from time to time.

Giant Yeti

yeti days (featuring yeti for days)

The listing for Sparta went online without a hitch, and the open house was held the first weekend in January. It was a pain in the ass – not only because we had to keep the place SPOTLESS while we were still living in it, but also because we didn’t want to leave the three cats in the unit while it was being shown. Ed and I gathered up the cats and supplies and camped out in the garage in our cars during the two open houses. They were not happy. Lemon was so stressed out he actually bit me at one point, so I brought him back upstairs figuring he could just hide in the bedroom while people poked through our home. It was a great plan; one that lasted for 15 whole minutes before MJ texted me: Lemon was perched on the bed hissing at people when they tried to go into the bedroom. We had to take him back downstairs.

The plan was to hold a second weekend of open houses if no one showed any interest in Sparta, but we got an offer on Sunday evening and after a little back and forth, we had an offer we were happy with. Papers were hastily e-signed, and by 10pm that evening, Sparta was sold. Conditions lifted a week later, and things became a hell of a lot more real: it was time to start* moving.

*: technically I had been moving since the previous May so the sale just made me move faster

Now that we knew what we were looking at moneywise, it was time to spend it all. We ordered an entire house worth of new furniture, have made 5 trips to Ikea to date, and had a clearance sale of our remaining items that almost ended in a restraining order because the internet is a terrifying place. The plan was to take our entire bedroom and set it up in the guest room, but I used heavy logic to persuade Ed that a couch/bed solution would make way better use of the room. Wheels were dealed, and our truckload of furniture should be arriving in Vancouver sometime between today and Friday, to be delivered to us in our new home next week.

We’re two days away from moving. The house is 99.4% packed – all that remains are some bathroom items, the reduced contents of the fridge, and the cats. I have an enormous spreadsheet with all of our box contents, a timeline for the move, a list of rooms and measurements, a list of furniture and measurements, a site map, a legend for my box and room coding system, and several postal codes because we can’t determine which one is the correct one. We’ve enlisted Shan to help us out on Move Day, because we can’t be in three places at once and I had to cram a lot of things into a four hour window. Friday is going to be a finely choreographed ballet of super tight timelines and stress. I can’t wait! I get to see all my STUFF again! It’s been SO LONG!

The new home doesn’t have a name yet. I’ve been toying with “The Hive” on account of the bright yellow door, but we’ll see. Sparta was only named thusly because 300 was on TV the night before we moved in, so perhaps something equally catchy will land on my face on Thursday evening.

Stay tuned for house warmings!

I_admit_it_the_only_reason_we_re_moving_is_coz_I_need_a_bigger_wall.__happywall__supportartists__wholelottaholes_preview

oh, i can’t wait to see you again / it’s only a matter of time

remember the alamo

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Alamo = Pocket Raisins

I’ve been packing since May. My life is nothing but boxes and garbage bags at the moment, all to prepare for a photographer tasked with making our home look Desirable to Others. Shortly after that is the open house, during which strangers will walk through our mostly-empty (but still lived in) rooms and judge us harshly (but hopefully generously). We’ve been given strict, yeti-removing instructions to get ready for the two-day event, which will see the closets emptied and the final bits of clutter Dealt With once and for all. Approximately 90% of my belongings are currently in storage. It is freeing, but depressing.

I’ve already written at length about why I have so much stuff. After living without all my stuff for the last several weeks, I’m starting to see the appeal of the minimalist lifestyle. I know that Ed, for one, is loving it – he wishes we could be like this all the time. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I’ve also been enjoying it a tiny bit: things are easier to locate when there are only 3 of them instead of 500. The house looks enormous and so on trend. It’s easier to clean, find the cats, and I don’t fall down quite so much. It’s all a win!

At the same time, it’s sad. I hate knowing that Ed loooves the house like this, because it’s currently devoid of any of my personality. None of the things that make me the force of nature I am are anywhere in the house – it’s all in boxes three miles away. There is a massive dearth of ridiculous in Sparta, and it’s sad. It’s sadder when Ed is so vocal about how great it is. I miss my stuff. Maybe not all of it – I hope that I’ll be able to set up my new safe spaces with a little more flailing room, for tantrum dancing – but all those tiny, useless, ridiculous things I have make me happy. Yes, I can live without them. But why should I have to? I can’t help my ridiculousness, or my need to nest, or my love of physical manifestations of good memories. I can’t help that I’m broken and need to take up space to feel safe and unremovable. What’s more, at this point in my life, I don’t feel all that obligied to change who I am. This is what you get: pink hair, giant boobs, a whooooole lot of really cool nerd things, baggage, wine, and beer.

We’re getting close to Important Dates in the Great Relocate timeline. Scary, grown-up things will be happening over the next few weeks, along with a lot of really exciting things: New York. Holiday parties. Travel plans. Gingerbread Oreos.

Stuff is good, even with my internal conflicts, unending uncertainty about work, and overall planning stress. I just need to keep reminding myself.

delinquent

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I am the worst delinquent ever.

I had to replace my bank card last week due to compromised situations, so I was issued a temporary card until the new one arrived. Unfortunately, in that time I also managed to forget my online banking password .. which you can’t reset unless you have your bank card handy. I was locked out of the online financial world, which meant I couldn’t pay my bills on time (they always get paid on the 15th because I am punctual like that). I had been stressing out a little about this, because even though my bills are never paid late, I figured Shaw and Rogers would immediately assume I was on the lam and never going to pay up and turn off every single internet I have. This would be an utter disaster (and frankly a recurring nightmare of mine), so as soon as my new bank card arrived in the mail, I got my online banking access sorted out so I could pay my bills.

I’m just paranoid enough that after I paid the bills, I logged into the services online to make sure they hadn’t covered my accounts in blinking red warnings. It was then that I learned that the bills I had sort of agonized over for the past week thinking I was seconds away from my home being repossessed .. aren’t actually due until the 27th of this month.

All that excellent worrying, wasted. When did I become so responsible? Back in the day an unpaid bill way a way of life, not a reason to panic. I feel like I need to go write some swears on the wall, just to make up for what a disappointment I must be to my teenaged self.

Also, this is my new favourite thing in the whole world and never fails to make me laugh myself silly:

making TMI seem quaint and docile

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Don’t get me wrong – I’m still angry and not planning on taking it for much longer. However, my unusually heightened emotional state of the past week may have had a little more to do with womanly hysteria than I was willing to admit: it seems I was full of the PMS. I never recognize the symptoms until I have visual confirmation, because I’ve basically forgotten how to period thanks to my superhuman delayed cycle. Instead of 5 days of fun every 4 weeks, I get one day every 18 months .. so I think I can be forgiven for not realizing when I’ve gone insane because of hormones instead of just regular insane because of stress.

To be fair, things are really lousy outside my uterus, too. The ongoing situation at work has given me stress cysts in awkward places, and one fucking ruptured today. There’s something wrong with my throat: it feels as though something’s stuck in my esophagus, and I’m constantly trying to force the nothing out which makes my gag reflex go into overdrive and then I panic a little because I can’t breathe. The stuck-in-throat feeling has been going on for about a week now, but over the last two days it’s been really problematic. If it keeps up for much longer, I’m going to have to go to the doctor. Trying to self-diagnose did no good at all, because the internet says I have several kinds of throat cancer and pregnancy, so I’m freaking out about that too. I need a haircut and a vacation. I’m worried/keyed up/excited/terrified about the future. I started biting my nails again. Work is .. complicated and disappointing. Those Prada Candy commercials are weird and dumb. My face hurts.

So there’s all that stuff, and I feel bad for complaining. Throw it all in a blender and shed a surprise uterine lining or two, and BAM: tears everywhere. Ain’t nobody got time for that!

If change is coming, I sure hope it gets here soon.

what, me worry

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Another year, another PAX I am wholly unprepared for. Each year I question why I attend, and each year my reasons (beyond the omnipresent FOMO) seem to dwindle. This year, my main reason for going is downright sad: I want to collect all the Nintendo DS Streetpasses from other attendees. Show me your houses, people, so that I may purchase your furniture. All hail the Happy Home Showcase!

I really need to just hit myself over the head and try to forget about work, and getting out of town to be afraid of crowds is a good start. I’m stupidly worried about my two big projects (and several other slightly less big projects), to the point where I gave some serious thought to skipping PAX so I could stay and work. This is dumb for many reasons, but my ridiculous dedication was winning until I pulled an underhanded move on myself: I ordered new boots from Amazon and sent them to Ali’s place. If I don’t go to PAX, I don’t get my new boots (um and the 80 coconut bars and BMO figurine that somehow also ended up in my cart). Since new boots easily trumps my worrying that the universe will fall apart if I’m not there to be angry, I will go to PAX. I am easily manipulated by myself (and I may have volunteered to work the holiday Monday so we don’t fall even further behind).

I need to turn off my brain for a few days; enjoy PAX and new boots and Seattle. After all, next week is going to be even more challenging .. so why waste all this excellent worrying now, when I’ll have so much more to do later?

I think I may be turning into an ulcer.

the best things in life are free

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.. unfortunately, my life is comprised mainly of apparently rotten things that all require cash money that I may not have. So, I’ve brainstormed some potential money-making ideas:

  • No one really NEEDS two kidneys
  • Marketing my blood as a hardcore, Mountain Dew-esq alternative to maple syrup
  • Selling my eggs – who wants a little half Malaysian in them?
  • Hand jobs for $5
  • Selling the sperm collected from the $5 handjobs
  • Opening a pie, lemonade, and handmade pornographic goods stand with Sam
  • Sell out! Attention all companies: Delicious Juice Dot Com is ready to start shilling for you! Do you want access to my four remaining readers? Would your product or service be a perfect fit for my .. apparent inability to finish a sentence? Contact me today!
  • Be independently wealthy and become a vigilante tech writer
  • Buy, then resell, Beanie Babies
  • Return all my Diet Coke empties
  • Kissing booths are so passé – I will open a motorboat booth. Make blaggle wooble sounds in my bosom for $2!
  • Visit the bereaved and claim I sold his or her recently deceased loved one an expensive, personalized user manual that has money owing on it

Oh yeah. I’m going to be paying my bills in NO TIME.

the feels

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For all my rah-rah gung-ho yay-team posturing, I am afraid of change. Positive changes can be scary, but I’m usually all for them – it’s the negative changes that bring way, way down and into a whirlpool of fear that no Maytag repairman can haul me out of.

Things are a-foot at work, and I am simultaneously bummed out and terrified to the point where I didn’t get any sleep last night (it was also hot as balls, but for the most part I couldn’t turn my brain off and no amount of dong-counting could override the dreaded WHAT IF). I don’t want to get into specifics – I have faith that the Big Situation will be resolved shortly – but it’s the fallout of the Big Situation that is marbling up my ass: people are leaving the company.

I’m always sad when good people leave, but of the three people (that I know of) who won’t be around at the end of July, I’m particularly upset about one of them – he’s the lead of the recently-formed team I’m on, and I was really excited to work with him.

I know there are bigger issues here, but at the moment I’m wallowing in some self-pity – as much as I love being a tech writer, my new role is the stuff dreams are made of. I’d still get to write all the words, but I’d also get to CREATE and share ideas and have input and DO MORE, and it was everything I didn’t know I wanted but now can’t live without. I don’t want to go back to being a silent, non-essential member of the team. I want to DO STUFF, and I want to do it with the team that had been hand-picked for the STUFF we’d get to do.

All of the above may still happen – things are kind of up in the air at the moment – but I was really, really excited about my new team and specifically, working with the team lead. It’s just not going to be the same when he leaves, and that sucks. I am Seriously Bummed Out, and worried about the future. Both of these are uncomfortable feels, but having both at the same time is really fucking shitty. Uncertainty, you are not my friend.

I don’t want to think about having to look for work again – to say that I’d be devastated would be kind of an understatement – but on top of that unwelcome ulcer, there’s the sinking feeling that I’d never find another job as fun as this one has been and that would give me the chance to do the MORE I didn’t know I wanted so badly until it was enticingly dangled in front of my face.

I have all of the sad. I do not like it.

i liked it better when they fit.

flux

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I find I’m spending most my time these days waffling between extreme nothing and extreme OH MY GOD THE WORLD IS ENDING. After six days of nothing (hence my radio silence), I’m suddenly awash in apocalypse and frankly, I don’t care for it.

I’m being vague For Reasons, and I apologize. Additional details will be forthcoming as soon as I get everything sorted out one way or another: you’re either going to get a lot of whining that things are horrible and boring, or a lot of freaking out that I’m in over my head and I don’t know what to do. So, one of those. Happy mediums are for pussies.

Since I can’t fully make words of my current catastrophes, here are some things I have been thinking about lately:

  • After many years of being a die-hard fan, I’ve taken down the various Dresden Dolls prints I had in our house. I still love the band and have many fond memories of the Strong Feelings I experienced while listening to their music (not to mention a raging girl boner), but .. frankly, I’m tired of Amanda Palmer. What was once a massive crush and adoration has aged badly into some hardcore eye-rolling at the never ending antics. It feels as though everything she does is an Antic, and I just don’t have the energy or spare time to keep up. Too many words about everything. Too many videos. Too many TED Talks, too many “LOOK AT MEEEEEE” moments, too many terrible poems about people in the media. I’m tired of every word and movement being a call to arms to her fans to give, and I’m tired of the SO NAKED aren’t you shocked at my audacity and I’m tired of the ukelele. Just .. tired. I’ll always love the Dresden Dolls, but I’m a little over Just Amanda.
  • I’m worried about my womanly tubes. My Weapon of Spermal Destruction expires in September, and I have to either a) get it replaced, b) have it removed and free ball for a while, c) remove it and go on another form of birth control, or d) have The Conversation about getting my fucking tubes tied already. I’m not looking forward to any of this, really, and I’m also over-thinking things a lot. Like, more than usual. As in:
    • In my experience, doctors refuse to tie tubes because they assume women are fickle creatures who will change their mind re: babies the instant the procedure is done. I’d like to yell “BULLSHIIIIT” from the top of my lungs and do a dance and wax many poems about why this is stupid, but .. is it? It seems like I know far too many people who were once proud soldiers of Team No Babies, but one day they DID change their minds and now babies everywhere. It’s hard to argue against the idiotic notion of “you’ll change your mind someday” when I’ve seen it happen first hand – assuming that it’s not fucking ridiculous in the first place to paint all women with one very narrow brush – so how can I tell my doctor the idea is wrong when most of the time, it appears to be right?
    • Am I refusing to have babies out of sheer stubbornness? What if I DID change my mind but I’m refusing to acknowledge it because I don’t want to be one of those women who changes her mind? My god, what if everything I am today is simply because I’m too pig-headed and stubborn to follow the rules? Who am I?
  • That one worries me, because I know myself well enough to know that if one day I woke up and said “hey, babies”, I wouldn’t go through with it because I’d be embarrassed to change my mind. Yeah, I’d deprive myself of (according to some) the reason for my existence, just because I’ve always said otherwise. Can I stick to a plan, or WHAT? Seriously, though, I’m not having babies and you can’t make me and even if one day I did want them I wouldn’t have them because FUCK YOU IT’S MY LIFE MOM NOT YOURS.

Fantastic. I’ve made it this far in life as a 14-year-old emo kid with no end in sight.

Too much heavy thinking for a Tuesday – I’m going to go buy some makeup to fool myself into feeling pretty.

i may never know